


Last Vacation for a While

by LadyRedCrest (your_icequeen)



Category: NCIS
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-02
Updated: 2015-06-02
Packaged: 2018-04-02 11:32:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4058440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/your_icequeen/pseuds/LadyRedCrest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written as part of the NCIS Ficathon. </p><p>Tony is away on vacation when he goes missing -- and no one knows until he doesn't come back to work two weeks later. When Gibbs finds him three months later, it's obvious that Tony isn't the same man he was. Gibbs/Tony if you can fit it in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Vacation for a While

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hawk_soaring](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hawk_soaring/gifts).



> There will be more of this. It is partially written. It just needs to be finished.

Gibbs was no novice when it came to the slave trade. His experience came from back when it was still legal, of course. Before the Marines, he’d been a trainer, and even then he’d done a few jobs between tours. He’d known just how to break the hard ones, make them splinter and fall to pieces bit by bit, so they could easily be remolded with some of their personality intact, or shattered, pliable husks for their masters. 

So it was no surprise whom they called on to go undercover into the black market facility. Abby built him a strong background that used everything from his past, even his own name. Morrow had fired him from NCIS, quite publicly, a display for anyone that might be watching, sure to get tongues wagging. And Gibbs made calls to some old friends and not-so friends that he hadn’t spoken to in years to get the ball rolling on his new “job.”

Surprisingly, that was the easy bit. The hard part was yet to come: going in and collecting his wayward agent.

 

~~Four Months Earlier~~

 

“Boss, if there is nothing else, I have a plane to catch.” Dinozzo’s voice rang across the aisle between their desks. When he received a nod, he was gone.

Gibbs hated this time of year. The annual frat brothers’ trip. The simple two week long vacation, usually to a beach paradise or casino, where Tony could blow off some steam with his college buddies. This year’s trip was to Biloxi. It wasn’t that he begrudged the young agent the only time off he ever took that wasn’t enforced medical leave. On the contrary, he felt bad the few years that Tony had had to skip the trip do to a case or three. He just didn’t like the way the team ran without him there. To others, it could seem that constant pranks or name calling slowed progress, but Gibbs knew differently. They worked so well as a team because they were a family, and part of that family was the Tony-shaped glue that held them all together.

The first week passed more slowly than normal. Cases were sparse. Tony’s cold case folders were raided more than once, though very little progress was made on those. It wasn’t until late Friday afternoon that Gibbs’s gut started churning. 

“Cynthia, what can I do for you?” Gibbs asked the Director’s secretary as she stopped in front of his desk.

“Director Morrow asked that I bring this down to you. He received a request from Agent Dinozzo for some extra time.”

Gibbs took the paper and looked it over. 

“Request came in an email?” He looked up at her, confused.

“That is what it says, yes. Is that unusual for Agent Dinozzo?”

“Usually calls.”

“Oh. Well, I’m afraid I can’t help you there, Agent Gibbs. I only know what the form says.” 

As Cynthia left, Gibbs knew something wasn’t right. He could usually set a clock by his loyal St. Bernard. This was different. He decided to wait and see if this gut feeling went away.

 

~~Three Months + 2 Weeks~~

 

The case that hit on Wednesday was a doozy. One general, his petty officer assistant, and his secretary had all been murdered in the general’s office at the Pentagon. The case was made more difficult because of the nature of the general’s work. The DOD was blocking them at every turn.

“McGee, get me those files. Kate, get Dinozzo on the phone and find out when he is getting back from Biloxi, or Bermuda, or wherever he is.” Gibbs ordered his agents, and then made his way to the elevator for coffee.

Everyone who knew how the MRCT worked knew that when Gibbs came back he would expect answers. What he didn’t expect was his two remaining agents to be huddled around Tim’s desk, having a hushed conversation.

“That chatter better be case related, Agents.”

Tim slowly stood, “Umm, Boss? There seems to be a problem with Tony’s phone.”

“Spit it out, McGee.”

“Well, the number has been disconnected. And when I try to access his personal email, it’s been deleted. I also can’t find where he checked onto his flight for a return trip.”

“So, not only are we stuck on this case, but we’ve lost Dinozzo too?” At Tim’s hesitant nod, he continued, “I knew I should have had Abby implant a tracker after the White case. Find him. Kate- ”

“Calling all the frat brothers, on it,” she said, as she rushed to Tony’s desk for his little black book. She knew, after years of teasing, that there were more than just the numbers of conquests in there.

“Tim-“

“Attempting to track where the last place the phone was used, Boss, but it won’t be exact. I am going to have to triangulate the towers that took the call.”

“I don’t care how you do it, McGee.”

 

~~Two Months~~

 

Eventually there was a break in the case, and then an answer. The assistant’s lover had killed them all. Gibbs could hear Tony’s voice in the back of his head: ‘It’s always the girlfriend.” In this case, it had been a boyfriend, but close enough.

Unfortunately, they were nowhere with Tony. They’d managed to track down all the guys who went on the trip, save one, and he was missing, too. The others all checked out. Each said the last time they had seen Jerry and Tony had been on the last evening, when they had all headed to their respective rooms at the hotel. Each had checked out and left the next morning.

The surprising thing was that none of them knew anything about an extra week. Not one of them had taken it.

Investigating Jerry was the next logical thing for them to do. 

“Ah, Jethro, there you are. I’ve just finished the profile on young Anthony’s friend,” Ducky said when Gibbs joined him in autopsy. “It seems that he may have been showing signs of schizophrenia. If not, then they were definitely on the way. He most likely has a job that makes him feel powerful over other people. Has Timothy been able to find anything out about his current financials?”

“No, Duck. We are still seeing the deposits. They are being made every week like clockwork. And we can trace the accounts they are coming from, but the companies on the accounts don’t exist.” 

Just then the doors to autopsy slid open to reveal a heavily breathing McGee. “Boss, we’ve just got a hit on Jerry Wilson’s debit card. He took money out of an ATM just outside of New Orleans about 10 minutes ago.”

“Grab your go-bags and Kate and get us on the next military transport to Louisiana. I don’t care if you have to kick off a commander to do it.”

 

~~One Month~~

 

The MRCT had been working out of the New Orleans field office for the last few weeks. They hadn’t had any other hits on any of Wilson’s accounts since the one that brought them to the south. But it made complete sense for him to be here. The area was within throwing distance of Biloxi, and with much of the local terrain uninhabited, it would be one of the best places to hole up for weeks on end without being seen.

It was a dead naval recruit that finally put them on the correct path. The boy had been found naked, badly beaten, and strangled to death. The marks around the neck appeared to be from a collar, and the minuscule flakes of metal suggested its composition. 

Luckily, the person that had grabbed the recruit right before he was to join his ship wasn’t as careful as whoever grabbed Tony. Cameras at the Navy yard had managed to capture the images of both the kidnapper and his car. After that, grunt police work revealed the car was registered to a corporation with headquarters well off of the beaten track. After talking to the locals and some close inspection, it appeared that the worst kept secret in the area was that the building was the home of a black market slave trade by day, and fighters club at night. 

On a whim, Gibbs asked a couple of the locals about some of the fighters. They were apparently slaves that, while in the process of being broken, were forced to fight each for food. The winner ate, the other starved. He pulled out a photo that he had of Tony from his file, and the men recognized him.

It nearly drove Gibbs mad, having to keep an eye on the place, but unable to get close enough to grab his agent. But Marrow was adamant that if they were going in there, then they would put every last person behind bars. So he waited, as patiently as he could. And he planned.


End file.
